doberman pizza. a baha'i (bahai, bahá'í) blog.

The Bahá’ís of Vietnam have just finished electing their new Spiritual Assembly at the National Convention in Phan Thiet, in the southern province of Binh Thuan. Quynh, Nu and Lam were there, along with 300 other Bahá’í friends. Quynh and Lam travelled on the overnight train from Da Nang, and friends came from as far away as Hanoi, all the way in the country’s north, to be there. Apparently it was amazing and a joy to attend. Quynh got to meet with several Vietnamese government representatives and members of Bahá’í institutions responsible for Southeast Asia. The Vietnamese press dutifully covered the convention too, with an item on the evening news (aired twice) and a number of news articles. I was surprised to see that the news was available online almost immediately after the convention, not only in Vietnamese (2, 3), but also in English and French. It looks as though one article was written by the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) and reprinted in a number of places, like the English press would do with AP or Reuters stories. Here’s the English article:

The Baha’i Community of Vietnam held its fourth National Congress in Phan Thiet city, the southern province of Binh Thuan, on April 23 and 24.

More than 300 Baha’i dignitaries and followers nationwide attended the congress, which also saw the participation of representatives of the Government’s Committee for Religious Affairs and the Baha’i advisory board for Asia and the Board of Trustees of Huququ’llah for Southeast Asia.

The congress elected a nine-member religious council of the Baha’is of Vietnam for the 2011-2012 term.

It also set forth key tasks with the emphasis on mobilising Baha’is to live up to the motto of “living well in one’s life and one’s faith” and strengthening the nation’s great unity and solidarity with other religions.

Introduced into Vietnam in 1954, the Baha’i community now has more than 7,000 followers in 43 cities and provinces, mostly in central and southern regions.

The Baha’i Community of Vietnam has been recognised as a religious organisation by the Government’s Committee for Religious Affairs in July 2008.

This article—a short one to be sure—isn’t a direct translation of the Vietnamese one, nor is the French article. The original reads something more like the article on the Can Tho convention in 2010 I blogged last year, with a lot more references to the Baha’i Faith being completely lawful and being in full accordance with regulations, etc. Despite not saying much, of course, the English article’s at least correct. I’m mostly just surprised they included the word “Huqúqu’lláh”.

Anyway, as soon as I get a little more time, I’ll take a stab at translating the Vietnamese and French articles for a little comparative coverage. Keep your eyes peeled. And if you’re interested in reading more articles like this, then why not follow me on Twitter and let me know?

Read about last year’s Baha’i National Convention in Can Tho.

This post is the fifth in a series on Vietnamese customs relating to death, from a personal and a Baha’i perspective.

It’s been several months since Quynh’s father Hai passed away, and the one hundred days—the “tốt khốc” (“end of tears”), marking a resumption of “normal” life after a loved one’s passing—have elapsed long since. Being surrounded by family has helped Quynh’s mother Lam cope with the tragic loss greatly. Quynh commented on her mother’s evident sense of joy at the large turnout for the 100th-day commemoration—sixty people or more arrived to pay their respects and to be with the family, if I recall correctly.

Vietnamese people are tightly interconnected with those around them. When I first came to Vietnam, I often mused about how little “personal space” I enjoyed, chalking it up to a case of high population density. Vietnam’s a small country, right? Long but thin. It must be hard to fit 85 million+ people in here. But more than that, the Vietnamese people aren’t afraid to be close as a community. Since returning from my first trip, I began to note how woefully separate, isolated I felt in Canada—as if every trip back home was like shutting myself into a cell. In Vietnam, there are no such barriers isolating people—or at the very least, they’re much less apparent than in the “developed” West. Sure, it means that people can pop in unannounced for a visit at all hours of the day, but hey, is ten minutes’ worth of tea and chatter so much to ask? Or are those ten minutes really better spent holed up watching TV? (Full disclosure: I tend to hole myself up with my laptop, which isn’t much better. And yes, I reproach myself for it.)

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ok, so I said the last post on “Death and Life in Vietnam” would be up before the new year, but I’ve gotten a little sidetracked—not in the least by the arrival of the newest letter from the Universal House of Justice to the Conference of the Counsellors, which, along with the Ridván Message of 2010 (167 B.E.), basically describe the aims of the coming Five Year Plan.

so yeah, look for the final post sometime this week. I’ll be back in Vietnam in about two weeks to celebrate Tet, so I’ll be nice and busy visiting relatives and taking pictures. What a blessing, to be involved in uniting the East and the West so directly.

This post is the fourth in a series on Vietnamese customs relating to death, from a personal and a Baha’i perspective.

On these, the coldest winter mornings when the roads are covered in snow and ice, I roll groggily out of my bed to get ready for work. Shower, brush teeth, shave. Get dressed in long johns, spiffy tailored pants and shirt from Da Nang. Lumber downstairs and feed the cat. Then pull a little piece of black plastic out of my pocket and pin it above my breast pocket, and walk quietly into the den, where the shrine awaits. Gaze with love at the portrait that stands there, and take three sticks of incense, applying a flame until they smoulder. Then holding them before me, I utter a quiet prayer, and bow three times, repeating the Greatest Name of God. Planting the sticks in the handmade ceramic pot in the centre of this small, humble shrine, I bow once more and turn away to start my day.

I used to burn incense, but only because it seemed cool and exotic. It didn’t occur to me that I could ever use it to pray.

Well, not pray. I can’t really use a stick of incense to pray, or can I? Maybe worship is a better word. I’m still not sure where that line is, or if there even is a line. I know how Baha’is pray, and I know the way we were taught to pray in Catholic schools. I know the Lord’s Prayer by heart, and I’m doing my darndest to memorize the Tablet of Ahmad. I even know what Muslim prayers look and sound like. But I still wonder whenever I see people offering incense at shrines, temples and pagodas: What exactly are you thinking? Not in a “wondering about your sanity” way, of course, but genuinely wondering what goes through the minds of the Vietnamese, the Chinese, the Koreans and Japanese when they offer incense. How exactly do you pray?

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This post is the third in a series on Vietnamese customs relating to death, from a personal and a Baha’i perspective.

Apart from the family memorial gatherings and the weekly devotional gatherings for Quynh’s father Hai, my time in Vietnam was rather quiet and uneventful. It rained heavily for a good part of my stay, which left me stuck inside most of the time. In my free time I did some tele-work for my employer in Ottawa, using a remote access provider to debug CSS and code up ASP.NET controls from the comfort of my chair in Da Nang. Yes, that was my free time. Whenever we weren’t visiting Hai’s resting place south of Da Nang—replacing flowers, planting rows of incense, refilling oil lamps—I mainly puttered around the house, taking care of chores. As I mentioned before, I spent a lot of time figuring out how to be a good son-in-law (in Vietnamese, con rể), hoping to learn the ropes, as it were, of Vietnamese family life. It turned out that my main task was, well, to stay in the house and wait for things to happen.

I eventually got into a routine that involved taking care of a few daily chores: preparing rice for lunch, taking out garbage, and fetching cola and other small items from nearby shops. Another big part of that routine was to take care of the family shrine—meaning, offer rice and keep the incense burning at all times. At every mealtime, we would take some of our rice (or noodles, or whatever) and place it in a little bowl on the shrine. Quynh explained to me that while she and her mother, being Baha’is, didn’t necessarily believe that her father’s spirit would “consume” the food—or that his spirit would even need such sustenance—the act of offering food to the deceased was mainly for the family, to help them grieve. Offering incense, she said, carried the same significance.

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This post is the second in a series on Vietnamese customs relating to death, from a personal and a Baha’i perspective.

The gesture of offering incense is omnipresent throughout Asia, it seems. China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, India—anyone who’s Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Shinto—even some types of Christian—knows what it means to offer incense. “In North America, not so much,” as I would tell everyone in Da Nang. In the West, most people treat incense as a way to make your house smell good, not as an object of religious practice.

I spent my time during my last trip to Vietnam trying to discern how to be a good son-in-law. Eventually, I figured out a few things that seemed to be key: preparing rice at lunch, taking out the garbage, fetching things from nearby shops, and regularly offering incense at the family shrine. If you remember my post about Vietnamese funeral customs, you’ll recall that when someone dies in Vietnam, a shrine is erected as a memorial, and that a central element of that shrine is a pot of sand used to plant sticks of incense as offerings, generally placed in front of a photo of the deceased. This shrine is an active centre of worship for (at least) the 100 days following their passing. “Worship?” I hear you ask. Yes, worship, or at least that’s how they refer to it—the act of paying one’s respects by offering incense. Vietnamese, even Baha’is, tend to draw a line between this act of “worship” and the personal prayers one might say before bed, or in times of trouble, and so on. Paying one’s respects at the family shrine is one of the most fundamental acts of Vietnamese spiritual life, and this applies irrespective of “membership” in one religious community or another; it is a tradition that helps to define what it means to be Vietnamese, and acts as a base for the family and society. Without understanding it, you cannot understand Vietnam.

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This post is the first in a series on Vietnamese customs relating to death, from a personal and a Baha’i perspective.

Arriving in Da Nang on September 6th, i was just about two weeks too late to say goodbye to my father-in-law. I had only a vague idea of what had happened, pieced together from brief phone calls as the nightmare unfolded. Upon arriving, the family had me offer incense at his shrine—a traditional gesture that would become very familiar to me in the following six weeks. This gesture is performed at every funeral in Vietnam—and during the six weeks I was there following Ba’s passing, no fewer than three close friends and family members also passed away. You bet I got a lot of practice. (More about offering incense later—lots more, I promise.)

Vietnamese funeral customs are based on a mix of Buddhism and indigenous spirit beliefs that date back several millennia. An extensive set of rites and customs govern every aspect of death, before and after it takes place, even extending years into the future. The process of grieving itself involves not only whole families, but whole communities, with entire neighbourhoods gathering to help mourn a loss.

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my recent trip to Vietnam to visit family after my father-in-law’s passing afforded me a lot of time to think. Even while I was still there, I knew I wanted to share with the world reflections on the experience of losing a loved one across cultures, from a personal and a Baha’i perspective. as it turns out, I’ve actually got a lot of notes, so much so that it’d probably take way more effort than I can give at the moment to put it all into one big essay-type format. So I figure I’ll split it into a few posts, covering a few different—but very related—topics. These may change, but I figured people might like to know what I’m planning.

• vietnamese funeral customs
• taking care of the shrine
• the life of a vietnamese son-in-law
• say a little prayer
• grief and the value of community

As noted, I expect these posts will come out every 3–4 days, as I have time to work on each of them (that said, the dates noted here are approximate).

Edit: All posts are now up (finally)!

A little behind, but as I mentioned a little while back, here’s an English translation of a Vietnamese news article on the third National Baha’i Convention in Can Tho, Vietnam, on May 2, 2010. I’ve added my own explanatory footnotes below. The article is a little off on a few facts, but overall it’s pretty good. This translation should at least give you a good idea of the general state of the Faith in Vietnam, and how it’s viewed by the institutions of society; in my opinion, it also offers an intriguing view of the perspective of modern Vietnam on religion in general. Thanks to Quynh and Google Translate for help with the translation.

On the morning of May 2nd, nearly 300 followers of the Baha’i Community in Vietnam attended the third annual National Convention of the Baha’i Community in Vietnam in Can Tho city.

The convention elected nine members of the religious council of the Baha’is of Vietnam for the 2010-2011 term and set out key tasks, following the motto “Sống tốt đời, đẹp đạo” (“Living well, in one’s life and in one’s faith”), aiming to improve the lives  of their brethren and benefit their country, to work effectively and mobilize their numbers to promote unity within the nation and solidarity with other religions.

Speaking at the conference, Mr. Đặng Tài Tính, Director of International Cooperation for the National Committee for Religious Department, stressed that the Government of Vietnam always implements a consistent policy to respect and ensure the freedom of belief and religion of the people, but that the people also have to comply with Vietnamese laws.

The charter of the Baha’i Community in Vietnam confirms in its principles and objectives that “activities shall be held in compliance with the laws of Vietnam, and shall uphold the spirit of harmony and unity of the nation and of religion, for the socio-economic development of the country…”, a crucial principle which serves to orient believers and grassroots organizations following the doctrine and laws of the Baha’i religion and the laws of Vietnam.

At the meeting, representatives of the Board of Counsellors[1] for Asia stated their appreciation to the Government of Vietnam’s facilitation for its help in facilitating the implementation of the activities of the Baha’i Community in Vietnam.

Mr. Nguyen Thuc, head of the interim board of representatives[2] of the Baha’i (religious) Community of Vietnam, said that since the recognition of its legal status, the entire community has entered a period of development and has achieved outstanding large-scale growth in individual religious practice, religious education, Holy day gatherings, the formation of committees and work groups and other administrative functioning.

In whichever locality Baha’i believers live and practice their religion, they largely have good relationships with government at all levels, allowing their activities to flourish in accordance with the Government’s policies on belief and religion and the provisions of law.

The Baha’i Faith came to Vietnam in 1954. The Baha’i religious community in Vietnam has almost 7,000 followers, faith activities in 43 provinces and cities, mainly concentrated in the central and southern regions.

The Baha’i community of Vietnam officially obtained its Certificate of Operation Registration[3] with the Government’s Committee for Religious Affairs on February 28th, 2007.

After nearly a year of operation, in July 2008, the Government’s Committee for Religious Affairs decided to recognize the religious organizations of the Baha’i religious community of Vietnam.

Up to now, the Baha’i Community of Vietnam has nearly 80 representatives of the Provisional Committee in the local level.

Footnotes:

The article mentions the rule of law many times over. I didn’t see the point of this until I started to read up on the history of religious groups in Vietnam, most of which seem to have had the unfortunate historical tendency to not only quarrel amongst themselves but try to overthrow governments. Some religious communities still display these tendencies, hence the constant reminders in modern government speech. Baha’is, though, are already enjoined by the core teachings of their Faith to show obedience and loyalty to their government, as the next paragraph states—a fact which apparently inspires some shock and awe in Vietnamese officials.

The term “Baha’i Community” is rendered consistently as “Baha’i religious community” in the original Vietnamese, but I’ve translated it as simply “Baha’i Community” for English readability.

1: The Continental Board of Counsellors, a high-level, non-clerical institution, purely advisory in character, with counterparts throughout the world; rendered as “Continental Advisory Committee” in the Vietnamese text.

2: The term translated here as “board of representatives” refers to the National Spiritual Assembly, a national body elected by the believers in a country to oversee the administrative affairs and spiritual health of the community.

3: I’m not really sure how this should be translated, but basically it’s a cerficate that shows they are officially registered as a religious community with the Government, and they are authorized to operate and conduct activities as such.

traumatic things happen sometimes. shocking, distressing, heartbreaking and life-changing things.

Quynh’s dear father, a humble, steadfast believer who tirelessly served the Cause of Baha’u'llah in Vietnam for forty years, passed away at the end of August. it was an accident; no warning, nothing. the family was devastated, and remains so, although with around six weeks worth of coming terms with the reality of what’s happened, wounds are slowly beginning to heal—perhaps tears act as a soothing balm in this case.

I’ve been in Vietnam since September 5th, or around two weeks after his passing, most of that time in Da Nang with Quynh’s mother, who’s taken her husband’s death the hardest. Part of my time is taken up with remote work for the Conference Board (a very positive arrangement that’s been working marvelously so far), and the rest with hanging being a good Vietnamese son-in-law—preparing rice for lunch, taking out the garbage, folding laundry, fetching things from nearby shops, doing odd jobs around the house, and keeping incense burning at the family shrine. I make sure to stay nearby in case Quynh’s mother needs anything, and I keep an eye open to make sure she’s not starting to sink into depression, which was common for the first while after I arrived. A 100-day period of mourning is common when a close family member passes away, and Hai (Quynh’s father) was very highly respected and very much loved by a vast group of friends and extended family. The hurt runs deep. I’m at a loss sometimes, because my command of Vietnamese isn’t good enough to express how I feel, or offer significant words of comfort. But I try my best, speak slowly when I need to, and things seem to work out.

When Quynh called me to tell me her father was in the hospital, I was having dinner with Catherine at a Vietnamese restaurant (a mediocre one—I won’t name names). after spending something like an hour speaking to her over the phone, I came back to my seat, finished my meal quickly, and cracked open the stereotypical fortune cookie, which told me to smile. Smiling was the last thing I wanted to do, especially after I heard the news the next morning. It was a difficult time. But I took it as a message, if not an incipient mission statement, for the journey on which I was about to embark: sometimes, especially when language and culture are barriers, the best thing you can do is to be strong, offer a shoulder to cry on, and smile. Sometimes i feel like I could, or should, be doing more, but maybe God has other plans for me right now.

As a postscript, thanks to all of you who’ve written with your condolences and assurance of prayers—even if I haven’t gotten around to thank you personally yet, you can rest assured that every single prayer has made a difference to the family.

I realize I’ve been pretty lax at blogging during the past little while; I blame the fact that so many eventful things have happened in that time. perhaps the most significant of these was my wedding—followers of this blog will remember that Quynh and I got engaged during my first trip to Vietnam; you may even have read the story. In the interest of saving some time while imparting some crucial information, I’ve collected a number of tweets relating to our wedding to share with you all. This installment covers the preparation for the wedding, beginning around December, all the way through to my arrival in Vietnam on February 20th. Check back for further installments and joyous reminiscing!

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Written on Feb. 25, 2010.

The air here in Da Nang is cool this afternoon, and the shade inside the dusty, cream-coloured offices of the Justice Department is a welcome change from the hot sun outside. I tap my thoughts and reflections out onto an iPhone as I wait for Quynh to finish her interview upstairs. We’re scheduled to be married in just over a week, and this set of interviews is the last legal hurdle to jump for our union to be recognized by the state – at least, besides signing a bunch more documents in triplicate.

I went under the scope first, and they brought in a translator to talk with me so they could make sense of my strange moon-language. The questions they asked were… bizarre. What’s her phone number? Her date of birth? Her email address? I guess I was expecting relevant questions, you know, like something besides what you’d put on a credit card application. But in retrospect, remembering what Quynh and I had discussed about the nature of the interview process, these banal questions make sense. They’re apparently intended to weed out arranged marriages, ones brokered through agents– proverbial “mail-order brides”.

I guess I always thought of the business of “mail-order marriages” as a big joke. I’d heard of stories regarding the practice and found them to be too unbelievable to be true. How could two people become so desperate– or morally directionless– as to reduce marriage to a mere transaction, to reduce a human being to a mere commodity? When Quynh explained to me that such “agency marriages” were a well-known (though strongly condemned) practice among Vietnamese women, I was filled with incalculable rage, so much so that I nearly fell off a speeding motorbike. it seemed to violate everything I’d ever believed about love, marriage, and human relationships.

supposedly the phenomenon is mainly driven by despair, on both sides. Quynh explained to me that many of the prospective husbands– the word “customers” brings my blood to a boil, although most are indeed customers– would be considered “past their prime”, and perhaps feel impotent to attract women in their own country. As a side note, some of Quynh’s neighbours have expressed astonished at how young I look– perhaps expecting her North American husband to be in his 50s. On the prospective bride’s side weighs the burden of percieved “marriageability”, or, in the case of a Vietnamese woman in her late 20s, the steadily dwindling levels thereof. In short, an unmarried woman over 30 years old is widely viewed as a failure. Such a perception isn’t unique to Vietnamese culture, but it’s much more pronounced here.

When Quynh and I broadcasted our engagement ceremony over the internet, we neglected to provide an explanation (or translation!) of what was happening, and most people felt a little lost watching the ceremony take place. “What are they doing? They’ve got rings… is this a wedding? I thought it was an engagement.” “There’s a lot of talking, and I can’t understand what they’re saying… when are they married?” To avoid that this time, here’s a brief overview of what we expect to happen during the wedding ceremony, that’ll be broadcast live as it happens, right here on doberman pizza (be sure to find your local time for the event so you don’t miss it—it’ll be 9 PM Eastern Time on March 5th, which is 9 AM on March 6th in Vietnam time).

Wedding programme

1. Introduction of the wedding ceremony’s program.

“Cultural” Vietnamese ceremony

2. Introduction of the two families.
3. A representative from the groom’s family presents gifts to the bride’s family.—These gifts, colloquially referred to as “red boxes”, contain traditional items—such as candles, tea, betel nuts, and so on—given to the bride’s family as a bride price, a long-standing custom in many Asian cultures.
4. A representative from the bride’s family receives and accepts the red boxes.—A running joke during our engagement was that the bride’s family had the option to refuse the gifts, meaning the groom would have to leave and come back another time with better gifts before he could receive his future bride.
5. The groom and bride present their two families.
6. The groom gives the bride the wedding bouquet.
7. Praying for ancestors.—Ancestor worship is a strongly rooted custom in many Asian cultures. In the Vietnamese custom, this includes burning candles and incense, offering fruit and flowers, and displays of veneration and respect such as bowing towards the altar, which is decorated with photos of the deceased. In a Baha’i ceremony, prayers are also offered.

Baha’i ceremony

8. Reading the opening prayer.
9. The groom offers a prayer and recites the Baha’i wedding vow.
10. The bride offers a prayer and recites the Baha’i wedding vow.—The Baha’i wedding vow is a verse revealed by Baha’u'llah: “We will all, verily, abide by the Will of God.”
11. The bride and groom exchange wedding rings.
12. An excerpt from the guidance of ‘Abdu’l-Baha on marriage is read.
13. A representative from the groom’s family confirms their acceptance of the bride as their daughter-in-law.
14. A representative from the bride’s family confirms their acceptance of the groom as their son-in-law.
15. The Chairman of the Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of Hải Châu, Da Nang, confirms the marriage.—A Baha’i marriage must be accepted as valid by the local Spiritual Assembly.
16. Gifts from the two families, relatives and friends are offered.—Gifts (usually red envelopes) are given to the new couple at this point by those assembled.
17. Either the bride or groom thanks those assembled.
18. Reading the closing prayer.
19. Break; the bride’s family gets ready to send the bride off.

so you’ve been pondering, and wondering. and you’d really like to hear the whole story. well, here it is (slightly abridged, but here it is nonetheless).

Quynh and I met online last year, during Ridvan. The big news at that time was the Vietnamese Baha’i community’s official recognition as a religious community by its national government, a long-awaited event that ushered in a new era of religious freedom for Vietnam’s Baha’is. It was also around this time that I was considering going somewhere in the world to offer international volunteer service. After finding out that Quynh and I had close mutual friends (Craig & Geneviève, who met in Vietnam and now live in Victoriaville), I decided to make the connection, initially to find out more about Vietnam and explore service opportunities. We got along very well from the beginning, and before long, we began talking about the possibility of the two of us getting to know each other better and becoming a couple. From the summer onwards, we began to ask each other lots and lots of questions to help us along in becoming “thoroughly acquainted with the character of the other“. By the winter—after some time of becoming closer to each other through our frequent communications—it became clear to me that the only sensible thing to do was to plan on visiting Vietnam: at once to serve there (hopefully), and to meet Quynh in person. When I inquired with the Baha’i community there, they informed me that their newly-formed Spiritual Assembly required a website, and would I mind coming to work on it? With this positive response from abroad, I checked on whether my work situation would allow it, applied—and received approval—for unpaid leave, and told Quynh I was coming to see her in the spring.

After preparing for my trip during the winter months and tying up loose ends at work, I finally arrived in Vietnam (via Japan) on March 31st. Quynh stuck around to introduce me to a hectic and bustling Ho Chi Minh City—a city that needs a lot of introduction. She then continued on to Da Nang to assist the Baha’i youth there while I stayed behind to meet with a task force for management of the website. I joined her in Da Nang a few weeks later, just before the 2nd National Convention on May 1st and 2nd—just about a year after we had first met. We soon continued onwards to Hanoi together, where she was assisting the friends there to establish the foundation for their program of intensive community growth. It was while in Hanoi that we spent the most time talking together about our relationship, in person and on the phone (since we were staying in different houses). These long discussions laid down the path for us to become even closer, and eventually led me to ask for her hand in marriage on June 2nd, while taking a break in—yes that’s right—Hanoi’s Lenin Park. The mystery is solved!

On our return to Ho Chi Minh City in early July, we sought the consent of both sets of parents—hers in person, in her flat in Tan Binh District, and mine via Skype to Canada. (God bless Skype and its creators.) With consent from both parents, we set a date of August 4th for our engagement ceremony, which was held in her parents’ home in Da Nang, according to Vietnamese traditions, red boxes and all. Many of you probably wondered: what gives with all the secrecy? We never heard anything about it until the week before! Well, let’s just say that, after thorough consultation, we decided to keep it a low-profile event, and to announce the coming union after the engagement ceremony—until, of course, the news was leaked on Facebook by an overexcited sister, making the point moot and causing much rejoicing all around.

What’s in store for us now? Well, our current plans involve Quynh visiting Canada sometime during the winter (February, the month least hospitable to those hailing from hotter climates, seems most likely), and the both of us returning to Vietnam for the wedding, which will take place in Da Nang in early March, during the first few days of the 19-day Baha’i Fast. We’ll be together around a month after the wedding, after which I’ll be returning to Canada to continue my job while she continues hers—she’s working full-time for the Baha’i Faith in Vietnam until April 2011—and submits her application for a Canadian permanent resident’s visa. The eventual plan is for her to come to Canada—that is, if the Baha’is of Vietnam will allow her to go!

So there you go. There’s the story in a nutshell. A big, collective thank you to all those of you who sent us their best wishes, whether by email, on Facebook, on Twitter, by phone or in person. If we haven’t already, we’ll be sure to send you our individual thanks, and hope you will send your blessings our way in March. :)

back in Ottawa. the wind is colder here, and I have to bundle up in layers of clothes instead of spending all my time in t-shirts and shorts. it’s cloudy today, but the drab grey of the sky is set against vivid reds, oranges and yellows on the trees. Vietnam is more colourful, hands down, but it’s nice to see that Canada still puts up a fight in the beauty department. “like flowers of one garden”.

i’m seeing what’s around me with different eyes, hearing with different ears. now I can tell when someone around me is speaking Vietnamese, and I can actually understand some of what they say. I can read the signs in Chinatown (even some of the Chinese ones). I’ve taken to picking up dinner at the Thai place at the mall, because Subway just seems unappealing now. plus, of course, it reminds me of the real thing. my favourite Vietnamese restaurant (next to the Baha’i centre, no less) closed up shop, which annoyed me to no end. but there’s a new Thai place there now, so I figure I’ll go check it out next time I’m in the neighbourhood.

still adapting to being back in Canada, and more than just because of the cold weather. it’s about being plunged back into the culture of the West, a very palpably immoderate culture, a culture shaken loose of its moral basis and bereft of direction. a “lost” culture, I suppose. I fear it, because I fear becoming lost in it. being in Vietnam did me a lot of good, i think; especially in helping me discover my limitations and rely on my strengths to compensate for my weaknesses. Canada’s cool and detached (albeit friendly) social climate hasn’t done me much good, I think. despite my sociable manners in everyday life, I find I have trouble opening up to social relationships, so, left to my own, I tend not to seek out the company of others. Family-centred Vietnam, with its deeply and strongly woven fabric of social support networks, seems to have helped me stay on the outside of that self-centred bubble that the individualist Westerner blows up for himself.

sitting at home in front of a gas fire now. thank goodness it’s not cold in Vietnam. they don’t have to close their doors to stay warm.

most of the days since we came back from our trip to Sapa and Lao Cai (which deserves its own blog post) have been cruelly hot and humid, wavering between 35 and 45 degrees Celsius, prompting me to tweet the following message a few days after returning from China: “good morning Hanoi. heat is hovering around 40 C and weaker air conditioners are breaking down, including the one at home. -_-;;” After spending almost thirty years growing up in Canada, I’ve never known an agony like trying to sleep in 40-degree weather (104 F) with no air conditioning. Well, OK, trying to sleep with a kidney stone was definitely worse in terms of agony, but this one’s up there too. I spent something like four days staying with Duyen—one of the Baha’is on the Vietnamese Nat’l Spiritual Assembly—and his family, because they have pretty powerful air conditioning. That’s when I learned about the cultural characteristics of air conditioning. Correct me if I’m wrong, but in Canada, 21 degrees C (~70 F) is considered a comfortable room temperature, right? Not in Vietnam. If I set the air conditioning to 21 C I would get smacked. When I discussed it with him before going to bed, Duyen told me he would usually set the air conditioner to 30 C to be comfortable—which made me go O_O.

Above and beyond mere numerical values, people seem to use air conditioning in a different way here, too. I’ve tried setting air conditioners to 21 C here and what actually happens makes the room seem way too cold. Maybe this is because people use overpowered air conditioners in small rooms, or put the thermostats in odd places. I tried setting the temperature to 24 C for a few nights and found that it was uncomfortably cold. What’s more, the air conditioner didn’t seem to shut off at all, it just kept on blowing cold air into the room as if it was blissfully unaware of the temperature. Where I would expect a comfortable, cool-ish temperature, I feel as if I have to wrap myself up into a blanket to keep from catching a cold. All of this just leads me to ask the question: how in God’s name am I supposed to use the air conditioning here?

Speaking of catching colds, by the way, I learned the hard way that I have to be proactive in dealing with air conditioning here in Vietnam when I caught a cold from sitting in an absolutely frigid air-conditioned Vietnamese coffeeshop around the beginning of the month, which persisted until a few days ago, when I agreed to undergo a traditional Vietnamese herbal steam treatment to cure me of my lingering sniffles. It worked, but not after I dragged a persistent cough and cold through three different countries on a trip through Hong Kong, China and Macau—and this at a time just after the WHO decided to label the H1N1 swine flu crisis a pandemic, triggering automatic quarantine if you so much as cough at a border station.

Since then, I’ve been acutely aware of these wide-mouthed cooling machines lining the ceilings or rising up from the floors, and wary for those that are set to some innocuous temperature like 18 degrees C, but which, in reality, are set to Cirno-style “CRYO-FREEZE WITH ENGLISH BEEF” setting. Sigh. …why do so many things have to be so different here?

coming from a northern country with a cool, temperate climate, I’ve never really found myself wanting or needing a siesta in the afternoon. Canadians don’t really have such a concept; we work from 8:30 to 4:30, with a one-hour lunch break. Not so in Vietnam, a tropical country with a hot and humid climate to match, where people walk around with tans, parasols and conical hats, and where a lunch break of at least two hours is de rigueur. At first, it was funny seeing everyone go to sleep at two in the afternoon, or seeing a children’s class pause from 12:30 to 2:30 and seeing the adults follow suit with their younger counterparts. Now that I’ve been here for a couple of months, though—and having made the mistake of taking walks outside with the afternoon sun beating down on me—I can definitely see the value of naptime.

I love how spambots are finding my blog posts about travel and leaving non-sequitur comments like “I wish I could go there!!! I wonder how I can find cheap tickets!???!1/” and leaving URLs like ez-cheap-asia-tickets-for-real.com thinking that I won’t catch them and delete them. from now on, whenever I get comments like that, I’m going to edit the author name to something awesome like Funky George Washington or Blazing Mushroom Jets and add my own comments to what they write (read: autogenerate), for the benefit and amusement of my (actual, i.e. human) readers.

I’m in Hanoi right now. I think I’m taking about the same time getting used to it as it took in Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang, but Hanoi definitely has a rougher edge than the others. Dirtier, less glossy, more polluted, and definitely as noisy and chaotic as Ho Chi Minh City. At the same time, Hanoi has a lot of beautiful landmarks, like the Ho Chi Minh Museum and Mausoleum (yes, they really love Ho Chi Minh here), Hoan Kiem lake, and so on. There are a lot of trees lining the streets here, much like Da Nang. Inexplicably, I haven’t tasted the pho here yet—which is supposed to be the best in Vietnam. Actually, the fact that I haven’t tried it yet may be mainly due to the incredible hospitality of those families hosting me, meaning that just about every meal I eat is homemade Vietnamese cooking (which is more varied than I ever could have expected).

the Vietnamese—especially from the North, I think—seem to have the same concept of politeness as Persian tarof; whatever the case, they must provide hospitality to those they meet, even if it hurts. that is, if you show up unexpected to someone’s door, be prepared to be treated like a king and offered tea and sweets and fruits several times, but also be aware that you may be eating your hosts’ dinner for the night. The reverse is true: if you’re invited to dinner and you’re really not hungry, you’ll have to expect to be invited many times in succession even if you refuse each time. If you do go to dinner, you’ll have to expect your hosts to keep offering you more and more food, even if you’re full. The general rule of thumb is: if you seriously want to say “no”, you have to say it at least three times. If you refuse an invitation three times, they’ll generally understand that no, you don’t want anymore squid/tofu/water spinach/corn/fish/weird pickled things. Thankfully, having grown up in a Baha’i community full of Persian friends, I managed to get a bit of the inside scoop on tarof—institutional politeness.

If you’re staying with Vietnamese friends, understand that they will probably refuse having you pay for yourself, i.e. when it comes to helping with the food, electricity, internet, laundry, whatever bills. You’ll have to insist (again, probably at least three times) if you seriously want to contribute for the impact of your stay. However, that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t appreciate the help; they’re just very polite. Some sort of gift during or at the end of your stay is well appreciated; gifts for a family’s children are especially well received. Something that relates to your country of origin is also a good gift idea.

Since this post is largely about politeness, maybe I should write a bit about the proper use of Vietnamese pronouns, since the way you address someone here plays a huge role in politeness. Unlike the English language, which uses only the words “you” and “I/me” as second- and first-person pronouns, Vietnamese pronouns are myriad and change depending on a person’s age, your relation to them, the formality of the occasion, and so on. For example, the most common pronouns I use in addressing someone of my parents’ age (~45-65) are “chu” (uncle) and “cô” (auntie). When speaking with them, I’m required to refer to myself as “con” or “châu” (child). Since I’m almost 30, I can probably get away with addressing people of my brother and sister’s age (~31-40) as “anh” (older brother) and “chi” (older sister), and I would refer to myself as “em” (younger brother/sister). I can call anyone younger than myself “em” as well—they would call me “anh”—and I can refer to myself as “chu” to children or junior youth—they would refer to themselves as “con” or “châu”. Confused? I sure was. I’m still getting used to it. Every time I found out about a new pronoun, I buried my face in my palms in despair.

Perhaps one of the reasons I tend to be a little more introverted is that I don’t adapt too well to formality, or, at least, it makes me uncomfortable. I’d much rather refer to everybody as “dude” and address them with a simple “yo”. But, to quote the guidebook I left behind in Saigon, when you’re in Nam, do as the Viets. One of the challenges of living as a visitor in a different place is learning to be humble and to show respect to the local culture and its customs. Isn’t respect one of the signs of love?

if travelogues are supposed to be comprehensive descriptions of places one travels, touching on such pertinent information as top attractions, demographics, geography, social and cultural overviews and so on, then I think I’m pretty bad at writing them. most of what I’ve written so far seems to be accounts of me taking a motorbike ride from one end of a town to the other, to do such-and-such and visit Uncle So-and-so (no, not Uncle Ho-and-Ho). I guess that’s just what I feel comfortable writing about: what I’ve seen and experienced, told from off the top of my head as if I was speaking about it in my own rambling, roundabout and (hopefully) amusing way. if any of you have been expecting Lonely Planet, please accept my sincerest apologies.

after putting so much effort into keeping my Twitter feed up to date, I stopped and realized that I’d been neglecting my trusty old blog. (I really need to add an automated twitter widget to this thing.) I suppose my recent work on the official website of the Baha’is of Vietnam is mainly responsible for that—most of my spare brainwaves have gone into solving all the web design puzzles needed to make it a reality. It was featured at the Vietnamese National Convention—which deserves another post entirely, of course—and received hearty rounds of applause from all pleasant. I went: d(^_^)b

after my first week in Vietnam—which was basically a write-off due to exhaustion and jet-lag—it seems like it’s taken the rest of the month of April for me to start getting remotely comfortable. confidence, as you may have guessed, has been building steadily as I try new things: shopping for my own groceries, cycling through traffic on my own, building my Vietnamese vocabulary bit by bit. curiosity, a sense of wonder, and openness to new experiences have helped me immensely in adapting to these new surroundings, with its particular culture, geography, climate, and so on. I basically tossed my guidebook—sorry, Lonely Planet, I still love you guys though—out the window and entrusted my life to my Baha’i hosts and their warm, friendly and welcoming family, who took it upon themselves to take care of me and show me the ins and outs of Ho Chi Minh City and, now, Da Nang. I got a great sample of Ho Chi Minh City’s hidden cafés, tucked away into the side alleys of Phu Nhuan and Tan Binh Districts, Districts 11, 10 and 3—all with wi-fi for me to carry on with my web design work without the nuisance of weekly power cuts. I was able to visit Baha’i pioneers along the riverfront in District 2—basically a residential haven for expatriates from Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, and the like—and marvel at the opulence so near to the dusty, beat-up streets of the inner city. I was able to scour the markets around Districts 1 and 3—Ho Chi Minh City’s downtown—ending up at Dan Sinh Market, a veritable gravesite full of dusty (and mostly fake) relics from the American War: reproduction helmets, uniforms, patches, even zippo lighters all greased and beat up to look their most authentic. I’ve gotten caught in Vietnam’s torrential downpours, forced to huddle under the back of a poncho as we zoomed (or attempted to zoom) back home on our trusty, rusty motorbike. And yes, I’ve had the chance to sample a wider variety of Vietnamese cuisine than I’d ever imagined existed—from four different kinds of noodles to baguettes to curry to all different kinds of meat, thankfully excluding such delicacies as dog and rat (to name a few).

there’s something undeniably appealing about Vietnam. my first impression was that of being plunged into a chaotic matrix of motorbikes whizzing past me on every side, surrounded by fluorescent shop signs in a mysterious language, with smells of gasoline, fish, incense, flowers and (???) breathing from every alley and corner. while it was foreign and frightening the first few nights, it seems to have become familiar—and slower, making the endless stream of motorbikes seem less like a frenzied race and more like the smooth, steady chaos of droplets coursing through the city’s bloodstream. the people here are friendly, and not just fake friendly like in Canada, but sincerely friendly, good-natured, happy to see you, ready to invite you in. Maybe it’s wonder that seizes them when seeing someone of my size walking through the narrow, winding streets—at 5’11″, I tower over most Vietnamese: men, women and children alike. the Vietnamese people are expressive, straightforward, and sincere; excepting social taboos, they are entirely unafraid of asking you any question or telling you honestly how they feel about any subject—including how ugly or handsome you might be. Vietnam teems with life in every shop, around every corner, from the city and the countryside alike. life is loud here—from the honking of horns and rumble of motors on the streets to the crowing of roosters, to the laughter of children and the shouts of shop owners, to the creaking of poorly oiled gates and the whine of machinery in impromptu factories—but once you get used to it, it gains a strange, familiar musicality, like an unwritten, de facto anthem.

a month into my visit to Vietnam, I’m already in love. will I want to go back to Canada at the end?

A few more choice tweets from my Twitter feed for those who still haven’t subscribed yet:

Apr. 12th

• dinner with cousins was interrupted by some sort of domestic squabble in the street outside. angry, rapid-fire vietnamese cursing involved.
• Motorbike got a flat on Hai Ba Trung x Nguyen Dinh Chieu. Chillin’ while it gets fixed by a street-corner handywoman. Oh Vietnam, I love you

Apr. 13th

• Went alone for iced coffee this AM, and was NOT, repeat, NOT ripped off. VICTORY!
• Of course, the waitress seemed to have some sort of crush on me, so maybe it didn’t really count… Oh well.

Apr. 14th

• slow getting started today, but things are coming together. just got take-out pho in little baggies for lunch :3

read more… »

Day 12 in Vietnam. Those who’ve been following my aforementioned Twitter feed know that I’ve already started to take my first few steps into independent living, including borrowing a bicycle from one of the local Baha’is—which brings me into closer contact than ever before with that most omnipresent feature of Saigon/HCMC: traffic. Thanks perhaps to my maverick bike riding style (think Paperboy), I’ve managed to do pretty well for myself in the chaotic weave of motorbikes. The video game metaphor is actually quite apt, you know. If you’ve ever played one of those games where enemies are coming at you from all directions at the most ridiculous frequency and wondered who in their right minds would create such a difficult game, you might want to come ride a bike in Ho Chi Minh City, to realize that, in fact, there actually are such places in the real world. and to think that, until last year, there was no such thing as a helmet law in Vietnam…

Speaking of bikes, I biked down to the Baha’i Centre yesterday in order to make some calls—home internet got cut off for some reason, and my newfangled Vietnamese cell phone is on the blink (bad battery, I think). Once there, I cooled down for a few minutes and then made plans to meet Tahirih, my contact for the National Spiritual Assembly’s website, in about an hour to discuss things. Where? Well, why not District 1—downtown? Sure. Except that it appears that the trip from the Baha’i Centre to District 1 is about half an hour long on a motorbike (hence, even longer on a bicycle). Oops. After a little while’s worth of thinking, I ended up asking for a motorbike ride from Chi, one of the Baha’is at the centre, and managed to get there in time anyway. We met at a nice little French bistro—yup, French influence in Vietnam is still strong. Tahirih brought along her kids, who ordered pizza and ice cream and played with Chi while we talked web design and determined what had to be done in the next week or so, before I leave HCMC for Danang next week. After the meeting was done, we motorbiked back through considerably thicker traffic to reach the Baha’i Centre once again, and after taking a few more minutes to cool down, I biked back home on my little one-gear clinker, doing my paperboy schtick through a throng of motorbikes, cars, buses, carts, horses(!!), and just random confused people.

I think I love this place… but it’s a strange kind of love.

For those of who aren’t yet subscribed to my Twitter feed, here’s what you’ve been missing for the past week:

Apr. 1st

• AAAHHHHHH IT’S FREAKING HOT
• touched down in Saigon a couple of hours ago, everything seems to be ok so far. i’m off to bed in a sec. look for photos tomorrow.
• GOOD MORNING VIETNAM! ok, I know you all wanted me to say that, so now it’s out of the way. the roosters outside do help add a little colour
• i suppose i could pull an april fool’s prank of some sort but reality is just much cooler than jokes right now

Apr. 2nd

• the visit to KFC (Gà rán Kentucky) in Saigon was funny. rice? with gravy on it? wow. and yeah, I know, you’d think I’d go for phở first off.
• the noise here is amazing. from 7 AM to 10 PM it’s kids, roosters, motorcycles, street vendors, TVs, radios, pretty much anything
• reading and re-reading a Baha’i pioneering doc about culture shock; all the symptoms seem to apply. praying for serenity while i adjust.)

read more… »

Expand this post to see several videos of motorbiking and traffic in Ho Chi Minh City (aka Saigon). Vietnam positively swarms with motorbikes, and Ho Chi Minh City, particularly, is known as the world’s motorbike capital.

read more… »

Day 8 in Vietnam so far, and the initial shock of arrival has subsided. The first week has been a bit rough-and-tumble, but thanks to the efforts of my hosts, it’s been much, much smoother than it could have been—indeed, easier than I had hoped. Everyone is so gracious and friendly here. Host and national institute coordinator Quynh spent the first week helping me get settled in and see the city, giving me my first real taste of motorbike travel. The first few times riding a motorbike through the chaotic streets of Saigon was a little scary, but I feel like I’ve warmed up to it quite nicely now. The first week was full of visits to the local Baha’is, going to exotic (neighbourhood Vietnamese eateries) and less exotic (KFC, aka Gà Rán Kentucky—whatever you do, don’t compare Colonel Sanders to Ho Chi Minh) restaurants for lunch and dinner, having home-cooked Vietnamese breakfasts consisting of rice and—well, just about anything. I’m gradually starting to be able to walk on my two feet here. Although it’s definitely not yet “functional”, I’m starting to achieve a very basic command of the Vietnamese language—at least enough to be able to make basic needs known without getting beat up or slapped. Just this afternoon, I was able to secure a bicycle to get around on, thanks to the generosity of one of the local Baha’is. As well, again thanks to host Quynh’s effort, I now have a Vietnamese bank account with an ATM card, which I should be able to use anywhere in Vietnam (unlike the hoops to be jumped through/potential risks when using credit cards).

About a week into my stay here, it dawned on me that several of my cherished tools—phrasebook, guidebook, and so on—have been failing me somewhat. For example, my guidebook focuses lots of attention on Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon’s glamorous District 1, where most foreigners hang out, and many locals prefer to avoid because of the high prices. But it focuses almost no attention on the Tan Binh district—where I’m staying—which starts at about a 15-20 minute drive west from District 1. Even District 11, the home of the Baha’i Centre, just south of Tan Binh, is underrepresented. It dawned on me that these books were written for regular foreigners, those on business or simply pleasure-seekers on their way through Southeastern Asia—and that I was not one of those regular foreigners. I think I realized something was amiss when I saw the string of European and American tourists being promenaded throughout the streets outside HCMC’s famed Post Office building on pedal-powered rickshaws—cyclos—on an evening’s visit to District 1. I can’t really explain just what I felt as I watched them from the curb, besides the distinct feeling that I was not one of them. It was partly satisfying, I suppose, and partly spooky, as if I was standing beside myself, looking on quietly.

All that being said, I guess you could say it’s fairly obvious: I’m not your average traveller. Although I’m experiencing many of the same feelings as a regular traveller—disorientation, wonderment, anxiety, curiosity, excitement—regular travellers can’t always go to a faraway country and find people—like the Baha’is—who can welcome them with open arms, as if they were family. for the privilege of being here, in close contact with people, sharing the same space and eating the same food, I am so very grateful. for the chance to give back something to those who have welcomed me so warmly into their midst and into their hearts—be it a website or helping them practice a little bit of English—I am equally grateful.